Armed with small handycams, undercover Video Journalists (VJs) in Burma keep up the flow of news from their closed country, despite risking torture and life in jail. Their material is smuggled out of Burma and broadcast back via satellite. ‘Joshua’, age 27, becomes the tactical leader of a group of reporters, as Buddhist monks in September 2007 lead a massive uprising. Foreign TV crews are banned from the country, so it’s left to Joshua and his crew to keep the revolution alive on TV screens all over the world. As government intelligence understands the power of the camera, the VJs become their prime target.
Production
Magic Hour Films, Lise Lense-Møller
Sales:
First Hand Films World Sales, Esther van Messel, +41 44 312 2060, Fritz Heeb Weg 5, 8050 Zürich Switzerland,
[email protected], www.firsthandfilms.com
Awards
2009 – World Cinema Documentary Editing Award at Sundance FF; Cinema for Peace International Human Rights Film Award at Berlinale; The Vaclav Havel Special Award at One World IHRDF; Joris Ivens Award at IDFA; 2009 – Grierson Award for the Best Cinema Documentary; Oscar Nominee
Director
Anders Østergaard
Anders Østergaard was born in 1965 in Copenhagen. He graduated from the Danish School of Journalism in 1991, and has written and directed numerous award-winning documentaries. Burma VJ received an Oscar nomination and has taken home a record-breaking number of 51 international awards.
Selected Filmography
Johannesburg Revisited (1996), The Magus (1999), A Burning Issue (2000), Malaria! (2001), Tintin and I (2003), The Vanguard of Diplomacy (2004), Gasolin’ (2006), Burma VJ – Reporting from a Closed Country (2008)
